By Rebekah Hannum
When asked to share a Christmas memory, a flood of images came to mind. Should I share about that busy December when my parents helped four excited kids dodge cow patties all over the hillside after the Christmas Eve service in search of a tree? Or maybe that icy Christmas when family members’ vehicles repeatedly slid by my grandparents’ country driveway as the rest of us hooted and hollered from the porch (evening entertainment at the expense of the equally frustrated and amused drivers!).
While those are great memories, I would be remiss if I didn’t share about the special Christmas of 2005. In the fall of 2004, I found out that I was in renal failure due to an autoimmune disease called IgA Nephropathy. This life-changing news seemed to bring with it a dark cloud over my heart that had me struggling to cope with a new reality. A failed kidney transplant by a living donor in June of 2025 only exacerbated this stormy reality as I came face to face with my own mortality.
Sickness, especially the kind that brings us to the edge of death, has a way of confronting us. As we work through the whys and the what ifs of our situation, the physical and spiritual collide in a very clumsy tango. And this is where I found my weary self in the fall of 2005: wanting to die yet wanting to live. Death was near and hope was a far-away dream.
Thankfully friends, family, and brothers & sisters in Christ were praying me through this difficult time. Their faith sustained me when my own was too weak. On December 15, 2005, I received a kidney from my friend, Scott. That Christmas was an overwhelming one. I felt better physically than I had in years, and spiritually I was experiencing something I hadn’t felt in a long time … hope. (I went on to need another transplant 10 years later, which is another story.)
The similarities of transplantation and the gospel are not lost on me. Someone is dying, and a sacrifice is needed so that another may live. When I think about those 400 years before the coming of the Messiah, I can relate. Death was always near and hope was a far-away dream. They did not know that a living donor was about to be found in a manger and that he would grow up to willingly give his life so that we may receive a new heart.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, New International Version).
What a timely gift Emmanuel was to this world! The Wonderful Counselor has come so that we may have life and have it abundantly! The Mighty God that is the way, the truth, and the Life, giving us access to the Everlasting Father through the Prince of Peace.
Merry Christmas, fellow transplant recipients!
Rebekah Hannum serves with a team in Galicia, Spain, and as executive director of Anchor418.
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